Narratives+2008

Learn To Live With It. by Kay Clark

“Kay, your pants are unzipped,” Mort loudly announces. How embarrassing. This occurred at the ticket table of a high school basketball game. Thank you, Mort.

“Dr. Perkins, this is Kay. I just took the dog’s medicine will I be all right?” He chuckled, “Well you may get the urge to bark and lift your leg at a fireplug, but it’ll only last a day.” Again, I was embarrassed; the vet never forgot it.

Late for a meeting, I was racing through our school looking for my car keys. I was desperate! Marlis, a staff member drawled, “Kay, they’re in your car, your car is running.” Oh no, another embarrassing moment, and in front of my staff!

The church choir was robed, waiting to enter the sanctuary. Cleo looked at me and asked, “Are there any nipples in the choir?” My mind raced, that can’t be right! I asked her to repeat the question. In a friendly tone she repeated the question, “Are there any nipples in the choir?” I think, this can’t be right what does she mean? Confused, I asked her to again repeat the question. It was the same. “Are there any nipples in the choir?” I was befuddled.

When asked to repeat it for the fourth time, she impatiently snapped, “I said, are there any nipples in the choir?” I gave up, “Yes, there are a lot of nipples in the choir.” She exploded, “NIPPLES? I said hymnals, hymnals!” The choir burst into laughter. Just another embarrassing moment for me.

“Missthus Theltun, yur penthul is behin yur ear! offered Teresa, one of my TMH students. Can you imagine my chagrin? I had ranted and raved, insisting one of my students had my pencil and wouldn’t give it up. Mentally slapping and berating myself, I delivered a sincere apology and asked for forgiveness. I was so embarrassed. The kids and my paraprofessional enjoyed a hearty laugh.

TMH students have a poor memory, right? Wrong. Thirty-seven years after this incident, I was visiting with Teresa at a wedding. She giggled and said, “Do you member when. . . she hadn’t forgotten and neither had I. We enjoyed a good laugh!

Having experienced many embarrassments; I expect there are more to come. These “goofs” don’t bother me much anymore. I expect them and they provide such good entertainment for others. I’ve learned to live with it.

Bad Hair Day by Shirley Crosby

Tucson, Arizona is where I grew up. The houses there were different than those you see in cooler regions. The roofs in Tucson are almost flat and perched on top were usually swamp box coolers. The swamp box cooler is like a big fan surrounded by huge pads of aspen fibers. Water is pumped through the pads keeping them wet as the fan draws air through them. This moist fragrant air is vented throughout the house causing cooling as the moisture evaporates. The smell of those fresh damp pads, floods my mind with a myriad of memories. One memory is from when I was in the third grade and fancied myself awesome at everything. I guess I had forgotten the time I cut my own hair. I was sure that I could make me look like the girl on the magazine. That 4-year-old me wanted bangs and boy did I get them! It was only one snip, but one snip way to close to the scalp and right in front for the whole world to see for weeks to come. You know at four years of age, a week is like a lifetime. In proportion to the rest of your life it truly is an agonizingly long time. Well, this time was different. I dare not cut my own hair, but I actually had some training at it since my last bang botching incident. The weekly trips with my brothers to the barber shop gave me plenty of time to watch and learn how to cut hair from the experts. One hot day Clarence, my brother who was in the fourth grade, and I sat in the shade of the palo verde tree out back. He had just come from one of those expert barbers and was complaining that his cut was not short enough. Being so good at everything I sprang into action. I strutted into the swamp box cooled house and snatched the scissors from the kitchen drawer. With great confidence I headed outside. “I just need a little off the top,” he proclaimed. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” “Sure I’m sure!” I assured. “Okay, just right up here,” he reiterated pointing to the top of his head. Another one clip job! It was hard to hold the half inch of hair that remained on the top of his freshly mown dome. When I finally got a grip, the scissors barely fit between my fingers and his scalp. One clip right on the top of his head! I’m lucky he didn’t bleed. The contrast of the bright white scalp to his dark brown hair shocked me into trying another clip. “There!” I announced. “Done! Does that feel better?” I was really hoping it would magically grow an inch before anyone noticed. I wanted to run away and hide; join the rodeo or something. “I don’t know. I have to look in a mirror,” he declared as he hurried into the house pawing the nearly bald spot on top of his head. Faster than a roadrunner he returned with a horrified look on his face. He didn’t even give me time to devise a good plan. Not that time could have helped anyway. “What have you done to my hair?” he screamed with rage in his eyes. “You’re the one who said it was not short enough” I insisted trying to refocus the blame. I tried to convince him to cover it up. “Maybe you could get a hat or-or- how about a wig?” It was no use. He ran back in and seconds late I heard the dreaded holler; that loud booming voice calling my entire name. Not just the first and last names. That would have been bad enough. No, he hollered the whole thing first, middle, and last. Months would pass and my embarrassment was overwhelming. I wanted to crawl into a lizard hole and die! At least when I was four, I didn’t have to see my mistake staring at me from across the dinner table, souring every meal. To make things worse, Dad decided to minimize the damage by shaving the parts that I had missed. Clarence was the target of every bully in the neighborhood. It was as though I had painted a bull’s eye on that shiny, bald head. Well, I wouldn’t fit in the lizard hole, bad as Clarence may have wanted to shove me there, and I did survive. I have one aunt and two sisters who went on to become hairdresser, but me; I haven’t cut a hair since. Forty years have softened my humiliation slightly so that I can finally laugh at Clarence’s very bad hair day, or shall I say, bad hair year?

Stressed out 1st Grader by Jeff H. Roper

Stress. Times of stress. They say that when you move to a different state, it adds much stress. For adults also taking a new job in that state, compounds the stress. Such was the case moving from Ft. Worth, Texas to Wichita, Kansas. Sometimes forgotten among the adult stress is the stress of moving Megan, a 1st grader and Jonathan, a 3rd grader. For the 3rd grader he was forced to change schools, change his sports teams (soccer and intramural football and baseball), and his neighborhood friends. However, he would be closer to his grandparents (residing in Wichita and Kansas City respectively). Likewise, Megan was about to experience some trauma. Entering the first day of first grade is trying enough, much less in a new state, not knowing a soul. Her only consolation was knowing that 3rd grade older brother was down the hall at Lewis Open Magnet School. My wife and I had met with the building principal. We loved the school’s focus on communication, instilling a love for the written and spoken language. Jonathan’s teacher went to our church and one Sunday introduced herself to him. My impression of Megan’s first grade teacher was that she was warm, sensitive, compassionate, and had a real love for teaching first graders. The fateful first day of first grade came soon enough. Vicky, my wife, said she thought it would be best if she stayed in the car. So, I escorted the kids to their classes. Jonathan was easy. I walked him to his class. He entered and never looked back. As Megan and I left Jonathan’s classroom, I felt tiny fingers squeeze my hand just a little bit tighter.

“Megan, here’s YOUR room. Let’s go inside and see the teacher,” I said. Graciously, Megan’s teacher bent down to Megan’s eye level and made her feel at home. I turned and took one step toward the door and said, “Bye, Megan.” Before I could take another step, that slightly chubby, usual smiling, brown pixie-cut, brown eyed girl grabbed my right leg in a bear hug, and she would not let go no matter what—a human vise grip. I looked on her little face, which had turned a shade of white. The frown wrinkles were furrowed, and those big brown eyes were even bigger. Her facial expression revealed pure panic. She was quiet though. No tears. No screaming. She simply clung to my leg for dear life. I squatted down in my business suit, looked Megan directly in the eyes, and patiently unpried her little grasp finger by finger, assuring her it would be ok. I spied an empty space on the floor mat where she could sit next to some other kids. I gently held her hand and guided her over to that spot. She sat down. I gave a quick wink to the teacher. The teacher smiled. I walked to the door. As the door closed behind me, I thought Jesus, that was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life up to this point. I kept mentally processing. That went well. **Not**. It could have gone worse. True. Meanwhile, back at the car, Vicky was chomping at the bit. As soon as I opened my door, she inquired, “How did it go?” “That was pretty tough, “I answered. She urged, “Maybe I should go back in there and comfort her.” I replied, “No, that is not necessary. Megan is Ok. She’ll do fine. I’ll be here to pick both of them up after school.” We drove away.

At 3:45pm I was curbside. I feasted nervously on my fingernails. At 4:05pm Jonathan had apparently found his sister, and they walked side by side to my car. Both were smiling. Each of them had enjoyed their school day. I let out a huge sigh of relief. Maybe on that day I had turned out to be the real stressed out first grader!

Small Packages by Sally Kimball

I was outnumbered from the start--outsized at my full height of 5-foot, 4 3/4-inches--and definitely outweighed. My Senior Lifesaving instructor was a burly, muscular 200 pounds, and knew how to embarass a 15-year-old female, especially since she was the only girl in the class. At least I was with some buddies--guys who, although a year ahead of me in school, had accepted me as...well...one of the guys. Being a tomboy has its advantages, but it didn't keep me from being picked on. Chauvanist Males hadn't vacated the planet yet and my instructor might've elected himself president for life anyway, so the only girl had to swim further, float longer, dive deeper, wear a swimming cap (although my hair was nearly as short as my cohorts except the instructor who already sported the bald wrestler look), and fetch towels. Oh, and clean up the equipment when we were done. This I tolerated, since I was outnumbered, outsized and outweighed. But I wasn't outsmarted.

I admit I lived in mortal fear of passing the last test when each of us had to "rescue" our instructor. As the days passed and we trained for our big moment, Chuck (I'll call him) took on a maniacal fervor, stressing the importance of overpowering the drowning victim, that the panic they felt might be our undoing. "Whatever it takes," he'd snarl, giving me a drill sargent's glare, his tanned streamlined bulk casting a shadow that obliterated my existance. I'd gulp and wonder how I'd be able to drag this tank the length of the Olympic pool--he was laying for me. I'd often give myself a good pep talk during my three mile bike ride to and from classes. I'd think of scenarios, consider the bouyancy of his bulk, but while fat might float, he was solid as the proverbial rock.

The day finally came, dog-day August hot, when we dog-paddled, stroke, jumped, and floated like the deadman I'd be if I didn't pass the final test. And predictably, I was last. I watched the three other guys take turns to drag Chuck's placid bulk to the shallow end of the pool. I believe Chuck licked his chops as he dove into the deep end for his final student's attempt to rescue a drowning man. He floundered a bit for effect, mimicking a swimmer's misjudgement and I hurled in, threw my puny arm across his massive chest and started my crawl to the finish line. Chuck lay in wait, let me begin my carry probably amused that I could even budge his Titanic mass, then made his move. In a flash of feminine instinct, I dug my right hand with all five of my short fingernails deep into Chuck's hairy armpit. I never knew a man could hold so still for the length of a swimming pool.

How I came to be a Literate Being by Veronica Dillard My first literary experience happened when I was five. My father went back to Vietnam, third tour, my brother was born only to be near death, my mother was exhausted, and I was forgotten. I spent my days sitting in a large white walled room, part of the hospital’s children’s care facility, and it was there I cracked open my first book (actually comics), //__The Archies__//. I fiercely held onto the character, Betty, the blonde, sweet, ditsy teenager, not Veronica, the dark haired beauty who wasn’t very kind and who, ironically, had the same name as me. When I didn’t go to the hospital, I was dropped off at my mother’s friend’s store, a Hispanic store of imports and exports and there I would spend my days eating banana chips and reading magazines both in Spanish and English behind the counter. I would read fervently on through my mother’s divorce, my brother’s countless surgeries, and runs to the emergency room. I would continue to read through her new courtship with another military man and eventually her marriage to him.

Fast forward: My first major read was //__Animal Farm__//, second grade. Yes, you read it right. I tackled this book with excitement, curiosity, and shock. If you haven’t realized it yet, I was an avid reader at a very young age. I found some perverse pleasure reading this book without really understanding its allegorical reference to Soviet totalitarianism. To me it was just about a bunch of talking animals.

We moved a lot after Vietnam was over. My stepdad became a recruiter and so we went to the Midwest were we moved several times over the course of two years. It was difficult to make friends, so I did the next best thing and read lots of books. I came to fall in love with the works of Judy Blume. I laughed with //__Freckle Juice__// and cried in //__Blubber__//, then discovered teenage love in her most criticized book, //__Forever__// (which I must have read about six times during junior high).

Ninth grade was a momentous point in my life. I fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and yes, Hawthorne’s //__The Scarlet Letter__//. I became these characters for however long it took me to read the book, the poem, or short story, then I would easily discard them and move onto another one. Then we moved. This wasn’t just any move, this was BIG! Deutschland here we come.

I loved living in Europe. Literacy became more than just words; I saw it in the remnants of the Coliseum of Rome, Rodin’s Thinker, the Bavarian fairy tale Neuschwanstein Castle, and the French opera, “Carmen”. These experiences made me a gladiator, an artist, a king, and a gypsy, if only for a short time.

I lost literacy for a long time after I finished high school. Life became a blur of disappointments, and I didn’t turn to books like I used to. My mother divorced, our home was gone, and I was failing miserably in college. I was alone. Desperation took over and I flew back to Germany lingering around my mother’s small apartment when I decided to join the U.S. Army. There, the only literacy I had was my soldier’s manual. I learned all about chemical warfare and how to take apart and put back together my M16A1 rifle in less than 8 minutes. I didn’t have to pretend to be a soldier, I was one. I finally left the military and decided to return to school. It was there I would discover books again. It was like returning to a protective hug that a mother might give-a safe and secure feeling.

I am a literate being and without words, art, music, drama, and even personal experiences; I would not be the person, the wife, the mother, the teacher I am today.

( PLEASE FLUSH LEFT THE TITLE WITH MY NAME UNDER IT. PLEASE BOLD THE TITLE. INDENT THE SEVEN PARAGRAPHS THAT MAKE UP THE STORY. I'VE NUMBERED THE 11 PARAGRAPHS HERE FOR YOU TO EASILY SEE WHERE THE INDENTIONS NEED TO GO (1) “GO TELL (2) “DINNER (3) “FIFTY-THREE (4) “HERE (5) “NOT QUITE (6) “ARE YOU (7) “YEAH (8) “WHEN ARE (9) “WE’RE COMING (10) “COME ON (11) I PLUMPED

The Cage for Currency by Melodie Harris

"Go tell your father that dinner's ready," Mom said after pulling the gravy spoon out of my mouth with one hand and reaching out with the other. "And stop swinging his tie." I wiped my mouth on her apron and then performed my Sunday ritual of pounding up the steps to Dad’s office to let him know I was on my way. I took giant steps over his everyday shoes on the third step, his box of mail-order almonds on the sixth, and his dumb bells on the tenth. I’d reached the front upstairs room, the one with no privacy due to the stairway and two doors to the bedrooms. "Dinner is served," I announced in an attempt at an English accent as I stepped over the last obstacle, a box of books from the book club. He'd grunt a reply because he was counting. The tie now hung around my neck. I watched his wide thumb shuffle through the dollar bills faster than I could count them. "Fifty-three," he said as he patted the stack on his roll top desk to make the edges even. This was my clue to give him the insulated bag. "Here," I said, "let me put them in the safe." I handed him the yellow money pouch whose contents sang the tunes of more offering money. "Not quite yet, little one." He blew into a light pink paper cylinder. "Gotta do the coins now," he said between puffs. I dumped the coins onto his desk watching some twirl in excitement of being let out of their insulated prison. I began stacking the coins face up, just like Dad did the bills--all facing the same direction. If they weren't, he said Jackson might be facing Franklin and old Ben wouldn't like that! "Are you coming?" we soon heard Mom yell from the steps below. "Yeah, Toots," Dad would say calling Mom by her name. We finished the stack and then we counted them. Dad would make me do it to practice counting by fives and tens. After Dad had recorded the day's offering, I flipped open the lid of the white coin organizer and began placing the piles in the appropriate slots. If we had enough, the coins would be sentenced to their cells, the pink and blue coin rollers. "When are you coming?" the voice was closer now. We looked up from our collection stacks to see Mom's embroidered tea towel hung over the banister as though she'd been waiting there for a while. "It's getting cold or all burned up," she said. "Which way do you want to eat it?" "We're coming right now," Dad said shutting the coin organizer and putting it on a shelf in the safe. "Come on, little one," Dad said to me. "I can smell that roast waiting for us." He set the yellow pouch on top of some other documents. I plumped down the steps one by one leaving my fingerprints among the dusty ledges of the banister. I didn't want to go until I heard the tick, tick, tick of the Lord's money being safely tucked away.

( PLEASE FLUSH LEFT THE TITLE WITH MY NAME UNDER IT. PLEASE BOLD THE TITLE. PLEASE INDENT THE SEVEN PARAGRAPHS THAT MAKE UP THE STORY. I'VE NUMBERED THE PARAGRAPHS HERE FOR YOU TO EASILY SEE WHERE THE INDENTIONS NEED TO GO (1) THE UPSTAIRS (2) MY OLDEST (3) OR, MY (4) FOR MY (5) WE’D TAKE (6) SUCH PRANKS (7) NOPE, WE )

Under the Aunt’s Influence by Melodie Harris

The upstairs, our private playhouse where we’d prank call random numbers found from the phone book somewhere hidden beneath the green and white graph paper, clipboards, and rulers on my dad’s roll top desk. Well, the numbers weren’t so random. I’d look at the street addresses searching for McDonald Drive, a street my mom said the ritzy people lived—after all, they did all have matching Christmas yard ornaments, fire places, garages attached to their homes, and real sidewalks. My oldest nephew, six years my younger, and his sister, eight years my younger, would take turns disguising our voices and telling who I imagined to be some ‘ole Mrs. Howell look-alike on the other end that--this was JC Penny catalog calling and that her extra large bras were in. Or, my nephew’s line when a man would answer, “I’ll give you 500 bucks if you go to the middle of the street and pull your pants down.” Michael was befuddled when the old codger didn’t hang up in time, and engaged him in a conversation about where would a young man get that kind of money. For my niece’s part, I’d invented a character named Mitch. Actually, I got it off the soap opera, “Another Word.” Evy would call and ask for Mitch. If he wasn’t there, she’d lead the person to believe it was her husband, and that she knew he was there with her, and he’ better come to the phone right now. We’d take turns calling Hearst’s corner, a small, corner bar next to the movie theater, and spoke, acting drunk, “B-b-b- beer is b-b-b-bad for you…” We’d barely hang up in time before one of us would snort through our nose with laughter. Eventually we’d have to quit calling because I was suffering from stomach aches due to the hilariousness of what we were getting away with. Such pranks filled many a Sunday afternoon in dad’s office on his private line, a line no one else knew about but family. My dad dabbled in commodities and all sorts of money-making schemes and wanted a free line for such activities, so that’s why none of the family never picked up on the phone downstairs and overheard us. Nope, we never did get caught for those were the days long before caller ID, caller return, and call trace. Decades later, I was glad such technology existed, but that’s for another story.

She Hasn’t a Pot by Shirley Crosby

Most of her holidays were spent waiting for her husband who, if he shopped at all would wait until the last minute. Then he would rush to the store, leaving her home alone as he spent the whole holiday at the mall. He would return empty-handed and announce, “I couldn’t find anything good enough for you.” //That’s because you didn’t give it any thought!// she wanted to scream. //Why is this special day only an afterthought to him?// “I don’t need to get you a gift for Mother’s Day,” her husband would bellow. “You’re not __my__ mother!” She dreaded holidays and all the painful memories they dredged out of her mind. While each holiday was a treasure to her, her husband didn’t share her enthusiasm. “Isn’t this a lovely pot,” she gushed to her son. Surely this hint would stir some ideas as Mother’s Day was quickly approaching. Each trip to the store brought yet another chance for her to drop a, not so subtle hint over this elaborate terra cotta pot that she envisioned adorning her front step. She imagined planting pansies in the spring, African daisies in the summer, and poinsettias in the winter to show her love of the changing seasons. As Mother’s Day drew closer, she resorted to blatant orders to each of the children. “You be sure you let your father know I really want that pot. That is all I want for Mother’s Day,” she would fervently insist. Finally the day arrived, and to her crushing disappointment her gifts once again consisted of the usual hand crafted cards from each of the boys and the yearly trip to the race track that she had come to despise. Why would anyone plan a testosterone-driven event like that on Mother’s Day? She was tired of feeling dejected. Having given everything of herself to make Father’s Day, and all other holidays perfect, she began to scheme about just how to inflict her revenge. Many times she could not bear the wait. Why was there so much time between the two holidays? When Father’s Day finally arrived, she almost chickened out, but no, this had to be done. She arose with the chickens and slipped quietly out to the store for his gift. She carefully wrapped the enormous treasure and sneaked back into the house to prepare the usual Father’s Day breakfast in bed. When he had finally risen and dressed, she ushered him out the door to the awaiting gift. She could hardly containthe smile on her faceand laughter nearly slipped out. He curiously stripped the paper from the gift that had been so carefully chosen for him. A perplexed look washed over his face questioning the reason for receiving this gorgeous terra cotta vessel. Now each time she passes __his__ pot of beautiful pansies, a triumphant grin appears as she savors the memory of that Father’s Day. .

Freshman Woes by Mary Wilson

Dragging my luggage behind me, I entered my freshman college dorm room. The small cinderblock room smelled of dead summer. My roommate arrived first for freshman orientation. Her things were in the room, but Hyun Mi -ja, KOREA, as her name was posted on the door, was nowhere to be seen. Taking advantage of this time alone in the room, I cautiously looked through her things. The closet door slightly ajar revealed only half a dozen brightly colored articles hung neatly on hangers. The reds and blues of the rich silk fabrics smelled vaguely of clove. Three pairs of tiny shoes lined up like little soldiers at the bottom of the closet, so very tiny.

// What kind of girl would wear such exotic clothes and smell of clove? //

Hopeful dreams conjured by my nervous brain quickly evaporated. Clearly this girl and I would have nothing in common. As the only girl in my family, I longed to share a room with a friend – a roommate with whom I could swap clothes, snacks, tall tales and dreams. That would not be happening. Heart racing, hands shaking, I bravely pulled the rest of my junk in from the hall. What have I done? This is going to be hell.

Goodbye to Kansas, my friends, my family and my boyfriend since 6th grade.

Having spent the waning hours of the night frantically loading up the car with all the unnecessary dorm accoutrements, and feeling a little nervous and homesick, I suddenly experienced a massive breakdown. Tears poured like a fountain from my eyes. My shoulders quaked, and my chest heaved as I gasped for breath. I cried like a three-year-old; it was ridiculous.

I realized my loud hysterical sobs would be heard down the hall, so I attempted to gather myself together.

// You’re a big girl Mary- you can make this work -quit feeling sorry for yourself. //

Through misty eyes I focused on the task at hand. I quickly put away my books, clothes, towels and dressed my bed, then marched off to the commons to eat lunch and make some friends.

Determined, I strode down the stairs toward the cafeteria. Here I could make friends and shake this cloud; maybe a meal would make me feel better. I carefully surveyed the vast amounts of consumables glowing under the harsh orange bulbs in square metal containers. Not today. Walking on to the salad bar I opted for the sensible choice and formed a small mountain of lettuce with a myriad of crisp veggies: carrots, celery, and cucumbers with a generous topping of cottage cheese. As I turned away from the salad bar, my hand slipped, sending the tray laden with food sliding toward my body. Suddenly the cottage cheese, cold and slimy, slid down my leg, and the plate fell, clattering loudly on the tile floor. Surrounded by exploded salad remnants, I stood paralyzed.

A peel of laughter followed by applause broke out across the cafeteria. I was alone in this disastrous mess. Given my fragile emotional state, jolts of panic and paranoia shot through my veins and I took off running toward the closest restroom. There in the refuge of the stalls, I took comfort in solitude and felt the tears of humiliation trail down my cheeks.

As I sat there, the fragrant aroma of clove wafted over the top of the bathroom stall. Curious, I slowly opened the door to see a petite Asian girl dressed in a long purple skirt and red blouse topped with a white jacket, the required uniform of students working in the cafeteria serving line. Her long thick hair was twisted up and held in place by a hair net. Leaning against the bathroom wall, she slowly sucked on the clove cigarette and watched me emerge from the stall.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked in a concerned, soft-spoken voice.

I glanced down at her cafeteria issued name tag and read her name.

Hyun Mi-ja

//I was going to be okay//.

Buick LeSabreby Nancy Sturm It’s sitting in the parking lot now. If you peek out the window you can see it, the champaign-colored 2001 Buick LeSabre. It has all the bells and whistles: heated leather seats, a compass for my directionally impaired mind, buttons to contour the seats to any back or leg length. With only 40,000 miles, it’s practically a new car. When I drive, the ride is smooth and quiet, the acceleration quick, and the gauges provide ample information on the state of the engine. But that’s not what makes this car special. This car, you see, was my dad’s car. He left it to me in his will. While Dad was still alive, I had ridden in it many times. In 2003, while it was still new, my husband and I rode with Mom and Dad to Phoenix to celebrate Mom’s 80th birthday with my brothers.

Much has changed since that trip nearly five years ago. The car looks the same, but the family has changed dramatically. In those brief five years, three of our four parents have died, and four new grandchildren entered this world. With all those changes, we still travel in the Buick; we still put miles on the road. Last summer, Dad’s 86th, I graduated from passenger to driver. As Dad’s amazing strength and energy began to fade, he was more willing to let his only daughter sit in the driver’s seat. We drove to Winfield together to watch Jesaia and Simeon play soccer; we rode to Manhattan for Elijah and Emma’s birthday parties. We rode to McConnell to shop at the commissary.

This fall, Dad took his final ride. Now the car officially belongs to me. I turn the key in the ignition, fasten my seatbelt, put the car in gear, and drive wherever I choose. Although the Buick is legally mine, it is still Dad’s car. Sometimes, just before I back out of the driveway, that familiar feeling overwhelms me: I shed a tear or two, and then I smile. Sitting comfortably in the soft leather seats, I sense strong arms enveloping me, longing to care for me, and I know I am loved.

Fifty Yearsby Nancy Sturm “Mom, Dad, would you like us to throw you a big party? All your friends could come and you could re-state your wedding vows.”

At that suggestion they merely looked at each other and smiled. “You don’t need to make a big fuss over us. Besides, why would we want to re-state our vows? We made those vows 50 years ago, and a promise is a promise. There’s no need to re-state the vows we’ve kept for 50 years.”

On the actual 50th wedding anniversary date, March 3, 1995, Dad rose early, five a.m. as usual. Mom slept in. While she slept, Dad prepared her surprise. Two large bags of Hershey’s kisses in hand, this 75 year old man crouched on hands and knees just outside their bedroom door. Carefully, he took one kiss out of the bag and placed it on the floor. The next kiss lay six inches beyond that one. Methodically, he placed the kisses, one after another, down the hall, making a trail of kisses leading to the living room. Once there, the path varied. The line of kisses curved in a wide arch around the room, dipped to a point, then curved up and around the other side, finally meeting the first curves at the point of a giant heart. Soon cupid’s arrow, also made of chocolate kisses, pierced the heart, signifying love. What better way to celebrate a 50th anniversary than with hearts and kisses, lots of kisses?

When the grown children dropped by the house early in the evening, the heart and kisses still adorned the floor. Dad proudly exclaimed, “These kisses are for the love of my life,” and gave her a quick kiss. She grinned, winked, raised her eyebrows, looked up at him through lowered lids, and said, “I’ll see **you** later.”

Blue Dayby Nancy Sturm I was only trying to help. In the kitchen, I chopped vegetables, browned the meat, and put it all in the pan to simmer. While it cooked, I mixed up some brownies and slid the pan into the oven.

She paced in the other room, if you can call it pacing. With slow, stumbling steps, she wandered from one piece of furniture to another, occasionally stopping to shoot daggers my way. He and I talked softly, not wanting to upset her.

“How did the night go?” I said softly.

“Not so good,” he muttered, turning to see if she was listening. “She got up in the middle of the night and wandered to the corner by the refrigerator. I was awakened from a sound sleep by a bloodcurdling scream. Scared me half to death. I found her with her face to the wall, screaming bloody murder. She didn’t know how to move away from the wall.”

As he whispered his tale she continued pacing. He leaned in close to quietly tell me more. Then she erupted!

“You…you…,” she screamed, followed by a string of expletives I’d never heard her utter. Her blue eyes, hard as steel, darted back and forth between the two of us. One hand raised, tightly fisted, ready to strike him. Fortunately, her hand and arm had weakened, and his 84 year old reflexes remained quick.

As she continued to scream, I tried to explain, “But we were only…I was trying to….” Then, horrified, I realized—she thought I was “the other woman.” I desperately wanted to help him—I did not want to leave him alone with her ranting, but I knew my staying would only worsen an already horrible situation.

Quickly, I gathered up my things and said my goodbyes. “Bye Mom,” I yelled above her screaming. “Bye Dad, call me when you can.” With that I left him alone to endure the brunt of her ranting.

Driving across town on Kellogg through my deluge of tears, I struggled to keep my composure and keep the car on the busy road.

Days later I found she had raged non-stop for two days and two nights, finally wearing out and forgetting the cause of her rage. Neither of them had slept the whole time.

Dementia is a horrible disease.

The Secret of the Brown Paper Bagby Nancy Sturm Class began the instant the bell rang. The teacher strode across the room, pointer carried over her shoulder like a rifle. This tall, slender, pretty teacher radiated a sense of total command. She unshouldered her pointer and smacked the poster hanging on the wall. “Number one rule,” she barked, “Do NOT touch the bag.” Moving her pointer to the next rule, she shouted, “Do NOT smell the bag. Rule number three: Do NOT taste the bag. Four, Do NOT TALK about the bag. Number Five, You can LOOK at the bag.” Removing the pointer from the board and placing it, carbine style back over her shoulder, she glared at her students. “Do you understand all the rules? Yell Hooah If you do.” In unison, the students shouted, “Hooah!”

Briskly moving about the room, she placed a small paper bag on each desk. The top of each bag was neatly folded over and scotch taped shut. Turning quickly, she glared one of the girls. “Do NOT touch the bag, Sturm! Do you understand?”

Mutely, she nodded her head in affirmation.

The teacher launched into a story about Pandora, who couldn’t resist opening a box that was supposed to remain closed. When Pandora’s curiosity overcame her, she opened the box, letting out horrible disease, war, death, and destruction. While the teacher droned on about the story of Pandora, the girl’s eyes remained glued to the brown paper bag.

After the teacher finished telling her story, she once again barked at the children. “Get out pen or pencil and your writing journal. Write at least two pages about a time your curiosity got you in trouble. And remember the rules: Do NOT touch the bag! Is that clear, Sturm?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” she quickly responded.

“Now get to work!”

The crinkly brown paper bag enticed her. She longed to slip her finger under the sole piece of tape that secured the folded edges of the bag. //Hmmm,// she thought, //I could fit my pinkie under that tape and pop it off the bag. I wouldn’t break the// Do NOT touch the bag //rule//. //Without tape the paper folds would gradually unfold themselves and I could peek inside—without breaking any rules. Uh oh, she’s looking around the room. If she catches me even looking at the bag she’ll yell at me in that drill sergeant voice,// You touched the bag, you scum! Kiss the ground at my feet and give me ten! Hooah! //Wait, she’s looking down now. If I lean forward and inch my paper and pen closer to the bag, she surely won’t notice! Not knowing what’s in the bag is driving me crazy! Teacher said we couldn’t touch the bag, but she didn’t say our notebooks couldn’t touch the bag! She’s not looking! Her head is bent over her notebook. Careful, now, careful. Slide the notebook over toward the bag and keep writing. There, the bottom of the notebook is touching the bag! The bag is only an inch or so from the edge of the desk. Just a couple of gentle nudges will send it over the edge—now it’s three quarters of an inch away. Did she see me? No, she’ still writing. Oh no! My hand almost touched the bag! Be careful—no floor kissing—not today, it’s Friday. Push…push…easy. Oh, the bag turned! One corner sits right on the edge, so close to toppling off the table…so close to revealing its brown wrapped secrets. She’s lost in thought, staring at her notebook, brow furrowed. Just another millimeter.// She held her breath, glancing at the teacher. //Just one more teensy push.//

The small bag wobbled on the edge of the desk//.// She glanced at the teacher who was still lost in thought. The bag wobbled without disturbing the room’s silence. //Just one teensy push….//The bag teetered for a moment, then flipped in mid-air, landing with a loud thud reverberating through the silence. She stared at the brown bag, hoping to peek within, hoping to discern its secrets.

Before she could venture a peek, the teacher’s voice exploded the silence, “Sturm! What’s wrong with you? Can’t you read? Can’t you hear?” She jumped out of her seat, strode across the room and yelled these words while standing nose to nose with her recalcitrant student.

“But I **didn’t touch** it,” she whimpered.

“Then how on God’s green earth did it land on the floor? It didn’t jump off the desk!”

“My notebook bumped it,” she squeaked.

“On the floor, Sturm,” she barked. “Kiss that floor and give me ten!”

As she kissed the floor, her eyes locked on the slightly opened bag. Each time she pressed to the floor, she caught another glimpse. When she finished her ten, she rose with a slight smile playing across her lips. Sitting back in her seat under the teacher’s withering glare, she thought, //It was worth it!//

__(__CENTER THE TITLE, INDENT EACH PARAGRAPH, BE SURE TITLES--A TALE OF TWO CITIES, THE LOVED ONE--ARE ITLAICIZED

Have I Got a Deal for You! by Vernette Chance

It was a heavily overcast and drizzly night in Norman, OK, that March of 1970. Inside my ground floor apartment in a two-story, shingled house located on a dark street in a rather rundown neighborhood seven blocks or so from Oklahoma University, my friend Cheryl Cory and I sat talking about what we had done that day. Unexpectedly, there was a knock at the door. Who in the world would be out on such a dark, drippy night? Maybe it was one of the hippies from the commune of chemical experimentation down the street. I went to the door and slowly opened it to find an extremely good-looking young man wearing an obviously expensive three-piece brown suit with a fine yellow pinstripe, a dress shirt, and a stylishly fat tie of the period. He was average in height, dark, and, as I have already said, handsome, Mediterranean maybe. Cheryl and I glanced at each other and back at him. He was dressed too well to be anyone doing a survey for the city, and he was definitely not one of the struggling-student magazine salesmen who often worked the neighborhood. He might possibly be someone campaigning for student government, but there were no elections in March. “Good evening,” he said. “I’m Mr. G. Q., and I represent the Everlasting Box Company.” The truth is I don’t remember his name or that of his company because I was standing there staring and not really listening. Mr. Perfect continued, “I am here because, for a limited time, we are offering repossessed coffins at a greatly reduced price.” Now I was listening as well as staring. “//Repossessed// coffins?” I asked. “Just what do you mean by //repossessed//? Did the buyer default on payments, and did you dig him back up?” I was imagining scenes from //A Tale of Two Cities//. Here was Jerry Cruncher with a face lift, a bath, and a Neiman Marcus suit. “Oh, no,” Adonis declared in his velvet voice. “The coffins were purchased in advance of need, and the clients failed to make payments, so our company is offering them at a discount to clear inventory.” He sounded like a spokesman for Forest Lawn in that Evelyn Waugh novel //The Loved// //One//. I am a skeptic by nature. Add to that the fact that my apartment was so close to the campus where I was a graduate assistant and where there were, and still are, more frat houses than you can shake a stick at, and I was beginning to suspect that a quirky game was in play. Cheryl had sort of merged with my bookcase and continued to study the finely etched profile of our visitor. Usually, she would have been in the middle of a conversation like this, helping to tag team the guy with all sorts of questions and comments, but she seemed to have been struck dumb. However, her presence helped to create a comfort zone because we had him outnumbered. I decided to call his bluff. “So,” I said, “is this a fraternity stunt? If you can find someone who actually believes this bizarre story, do you get pledge points?” “Oh, certainly not,” he smiled gently, never once showing signs of breaking character. “Okay, let me guess again. You’re taking a psychology class, and this is your class project.” “No, really,” he protested looking and sounding a little hurt by my accusations, “the offer is legitimate.” “Assuming it is, what would I do with a repossessed coffin, if I bought one?” I asked. “Go ahead, what are you going to come up with now,” I thought as I mentally smirked. “Well, they make wonderful conversation pieces. You could set it up right over there under the windows,” he suggested, gesturing to the other side of my small living room, “and when you get tired, you could take a nap inside.” Now this was a very nice save. This guy was more than just a pretty face. He had amazing control of his reactions to my reactions. //I// could no longer control //myself//. I began laughing, progressed to coughing, and then to gasping for air. He stood there straight-faced and patient through my rudeness. When I finally stopped making gulping noises, he asked, “Are you two teachers?” Cheryl and I looked at each other trying to gage the consequences of telling the truth. What would a “yes” lead to? “Yes, we are,” I finally admitted. “I thought so,” said Warren Beatty, Jr. “If you purchase a coffin tonight, we have a special offer just for teachers.” “Oh, Lord!” I yelped. “You mean you have audio visual equipment?” “Well, yes, actually, we do. If you buy a coffin, you will receive a free tape recorder with which you can record any last messages to friends and loved ones.” Before he had finished, I was crumpled over clutching the arm of the sofa because I was laughing so hard. The salesman just stood there. He never cracked a smile, never gave any indication that he was not absolutely sincere. When I came up for air this time, he said, “I have a sample in my station wagon if you would care to come outside and look at it.” Of course I wanted to step outside into the dark and drizzle with a total stranger and check out a coffin in his car! I thanked him kindly but declined his offer. Somehow we got him out of the doorway, closed and locked the door, and collapsed onto assorted furniture where we laughed until we could do little more than whimper. The next day, we shared our visitation story with other graduate assistants over coffee in the dining room of the dorm behind the English building. We thought maybe someone had heard of or read about this scenario being played out for others. No one had. “Are you two crazy!???” growled John McDonald, our resident conspiracy theorist. “How did you know that guy wasn’t a serial rapist?” –a possibility neither of us had considered and both of us found a little farfetched. If our visitor was some sort of psychotic predator, he was a very imaginative and quick-thinking (though, in this case, unsuccessful) psycho, far better at creating a scenario than Ted Bundy with his lame crutch gimmick.

If the person who was selling coffins that night reads this and is not in a mental hospital or penal institution, would you please respond with an explanation as to what the heck you were doing. My best guess is that one or more of my freshman comp students set the whole thing up and were hoping I would be gullible, or at least curious, enough to come outside where I could be photographed trying to buy a coffin out of the back of a car.

The Trash Truck Dilemma by Steve Maack

In retrospect, she probably meant it as a joke, or as one of those hyperbolic statements that gullible children take as legalistic fact: “If you cross your eyes, they’ll get stuck that way,” or “Uncle Bill killed the last kid who poked him while he was sleeping. Remember that kid you used to play with when you visited Uncle Bill? Ever wonder why he’s not around anymore?”

In this case, I was at the home of my preschool daycare provider, Carol. She also had a child my age, Brent, and we would spend our mornings at a half-day preschool, then we’d spend the afternoon together, playing outside in the sandbox or the snow, watching TV, napping, whatever four-year-olds do when they’re not at preschool. And during summer before kindergarten, we’d play together all day, even early in the morning after my mom would drop me off on her way to work.

One morning, Brent and I and his younger sister, Amy, were playing the driveway as the trash truck and garbage collectors made their way up the street collecting the rubbish from the stacks of black trash bags lined up house to house. I had always admired this occupation, and at this time in my life, I even wanted, more than anything, to make a career of collecting garbage. I mean, someone had to drive this enormous truck which has an ultra-cool, noisy, powerful trash compacting mechanism in it. When the trash truck used to pass by my house, I would watch out the front window practically praying that they would turn on the trash compactor within my view so that I could see what seemed like a truck full of garbage morph into an open cavern waiting to be filled with more discarded stuff. My boyish fascination with crushing and destruction took shape as I imagined milk cartons popping, glass bottles shattering, and formerly recognizable household items transformed into two-dimensional versions of themselves, like in a cartoon. Additionally, there were one, maybe two men, who stood at the back of the truck on a tiny ledge, and —this is almost too spectacular to believe—they moved from house to house holding on to a bar and balancing on that ledge, something that no self-respecting mother of a four-year-old would ever allow on the family car. The occupation of garbage collector seemed to fulfill some sort of archetypal or instinctive need for young men to move swiftly through the open air, a need met by horses running at full gallop, by motorcycles, and by riding on the back of a trash truck. Add this to the destructive raw power of the trash compactor, and collecting garbage clearly had to be the best job ever.

As the trash truck approached on this particular morning at Carol’s house, she ordered us to stop playing and to back up against the overhead garage door. She then exclaimed, “Stay back! They might throw you out with the garbage.”

Suddenly, this business of being a garbage collector took on a dark side that my toddler imagination could not, without Carol’s unwitting assistance, have imagined. Are garbage collectors also known child abductors? Is this a qualification for employment, or are they merely unable to distinguish between the garbage on the corner and actual children? Is this tendency rooted in stupidity or mean-spiritedness? I started to imagine the body of a living child taking the force of that trash compactor, and the sounds of popping milk cartons and smashed bottles became, in my mind, the sound crushed bones might make with children’s screams barely audible over the whine of the truck’s hydraulic compaction system.

The contradiction between the manly satisfaction that seemed to be inherent in a garbage collector’s job and his potential to abduct, harm, and even kill children sank into my unconscious and festered there over the next few months, brought to the forefront of my mind only when I might actually have seen a garbage truck and those horrible mysterious men who threw trash bags potentially filled with infants and toddlers into their noisy behemoth trucks. Primarily, however, I was preoccupied with starting kindergarten and the realization that I would have to walk myself there and home every day.

My mom and I walked together to and from Sunset Hill Elementary several times before school started to train me for the walk I would eventually make on my own. And then we walked together the first few days of school. But as I had been told would happen, I soon became responsible for making the trek on my own. By the time I had to exercise this new responsibility, I was comfortable and not at all worried about finding my way to school or back home again. In fact, I would eventually enjoy my ever-growing freedom which might be exploited on weekends and vacations to play at the school playground or meet throughout the neighborhood with friends.

What I did not count on was that the schedule of the garbage collectors in the neighborhood between my house and Sunset Hill Elementary would coincide exactly. So one fall morning I unsuspectingly set out toward school, and there, two houses from the corner on a cross-street, sat the truck, hydraulic compactor grinding and crushing away while the murderous, child-abducting garbage collectors threw bags into the truck in singles and pairs. I halted dead in my tracks, looked around for someone to help me, to protect me, and when I saw no one, I panicked. I ran back the way I had come toward my house, but I was sure they had seen me and were chasing me. Some part of my brain told me that I would never make it home before they drove the truck up behind me, picked me up, and threw me away with last week’s leftover stroganoff and soda cans. I had to find help, NOW!

Frantically, I looked for one of those houses that had the yellow and black sign in the window indicating a safe house for children who needed help, but I could not find one. So I ran to the closest house and rang the doorbell. By this time, tears were streaming down my face and the sobs were building up pressure at the bottom of my throat.

A woman in a bathrobe and curlers answered the door, and I had never seen her before in my life. “What’s the matter? Are you OK?” she asked, genuinely concerned. I tried my best to explain to her about the garbage collectors on the next block assuming that everyone knew what a danger they posed to children my age and size. I doubt I made much sense, so she defaulted to the proper next step: find this child’s mother. She asked my name and if I knew my phone number. Of course, my mom had also rehearsed this with me, so after sucking down the sobs and wiping away the tears, I managed to spit out my seven-digit code to salvation.

The woman called my mom for me, and my attempt to explain to her what had happened was no easier than trying to make sense of it for this poor woman whose house I had invaded first thing in the morning. If I had been able to connect what Carol had said months ago to my fear of garbage collectors, I would have had a much easier time explaining to my mother my sudden inability to make it to school that day. But I was just barely five years old, and while in my view, my fear of garbage collectors was quite natural, I had no reasonable way of making this clear for my mother. Consequently, under no circumstances was she going to come save me from them: “They will not hurt you. They don’t even care about you,” she reassured me. Small consolation, but I had no choice but to head back toward school; apparently, I was unwelcome at home until 3:00 that day. With tears in my eyes and trepidation in my step, I retraced my path back to school and tried to pull myself together, because my fear of being seen with tears in my eyes and having to rationalize my fear of garbage collectors for my peers was more than my five-year-old psyche could have handled.

As it turned out, by the time I left my benefactor’s house and passed the street where the garbage truck had been, it was gone and I did not see it again that day. But I never saw any garbage truck in the same way again. Collecting garbage had utterly lost its glamour. From that point forward, whenever someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “A teacher, “ perhaps a natural gravitation away from a career of abducting and crushing children to death and toward one a bit more nurturing.

Ex Libris by Vernette Chance

“Mom, the next time you move, don’t even think about asking me to help with your books.” That was my teenage son, sounding like his father before him and my father before him. The last time I asked any man in my life to move even a thin volume of sonnets for me was 1975 when my then-husband and I moved into our first house. My family’s barely concealed disgust for the collecting and handling of books is a pervasive attitude toward my ever-growing collection. So, fifteen years later, when we moved from Woodlawn Village to a house in Vickridge, I boxed up every book I then owned and moved every one of those boxes myself, though some weighed over 40 pounds. In the process, I pulled a muscle in my right forearm and had the pain to remind me of the task for six months after it was all over. In spite of the threat that such pain might reoccur, I moved my books myself every time after that, a total of four more times. The farm house I grew up in had very few books—a set of encyclopedias, a Bible, a hymnal, a dictionary, and my father’s animal husbandry textbooks from a livestock management course he had taken on the GI Bill after WWII. My mother was, and still is, a practical reader. She sees little use in reading anything other than cookbooks or popular women’s magazines. She has told me that she hated poetry in high school because she never understood it. She has never, in my lifetime, read a novel or even a biography. My father, by contrast, was a voracious reader. He read the daily newspaper, weekly and monthly news and farm magazines, and anything else in print that might be lying around. When I enrolled in my first college course that focused on novels, I left several of the required books stacked on an end table in the living room. Before I had finished reading the first book assigned, Dad had made his way through several. So, genetically, I might have gone either way, I suppose. I might have disliked, even distrusted, books. But I don’t. I love books; I love owning books. I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without books. My parents did not read to my sister and me each night, as many parents do now, but they did read to us. Our father read us the funnies and mother read us stories or children’s books. I don’t remember much about the books she read, only that there was one with a story about a duck named Jerusha, whose name became one of my younger sister’s numerous nicknames, and another was a book entitled //Pieface// which was about a bristly little terrier. I also remember Grandma Meyer, my mother’s mother, being a willing reader who often read stories or comic books to the three of us (my sister, our cousin Judy, and me) and had the patience to read the same comic three times in succession if we asked. Years later, when I was in 7th grade, I studied geography, and during the one evening a week I spent at her house, Grandma would read the day’s assignment aloud to me. Her reading made it easier for me to focus on the minutia I had to locate in the text in order to answer the ubiquitous worksheet questions. Back to those comic books--comic books in the 1950s were not the dark, industrial, violence-saturated things they are today. They were full of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Tom and Jerry, Ignatz-- another character whose name became a nickname for my sister--but best of all, TARZAN! I loved Tarzan comic books. They were not funny, but fascinating. I liked the animals more than Tarzan; however, without him the animals would have had no book to live in. Even more than the animals or Tarzan, I liked the serial that ran at the back of the Tarzan comics. It was something called “Brothers of the Spear,” and the characters, as I now only vaguely remember them, rode horses through a sort of African landscape and looked as though their hair was done in cornrows or dreadlocks, or maybe they wore helmets; it’s been over half a century, and memory fails me. The brothers were always having dangerous encounters that would end as cliffhangers. When I was eight or so, I saved up 100 pennies and asked my mother to exchange them for a one dollar bill. She asked “why,” and when I told her I wanted the dollar to pay for a year’s subscription to //Tarzan//, she squashed my dream by saying, “No.” With a subscription I would not miss any of the serial installments. When a kid needs, //really needs//, something that her mom won’t let her have, where does she go? GRANDMA! She //gave// me a dollar bill. I put it in an envelope, along with the very small order blank from the latest issue, and sent it off. Then, just like Ralphie in the movie //Christmas Story//, I waited impatiently. I did not check the mailbox every day because our mailbox was ¾ of a mile away. I had to wait until someone brought the mail home. Weeks went by, and I had all but given up hope of ever getting the comic when, finally, my first issue arrived. Of course, Mom then learned that I had gone behind her back or, really, over her head. I reveled in my first issue until I realized that there should have been a free gift with it. I couldn’t remember what, but I am now sure that, whatever it was, it would have been just as disappointing to me as that Little Orphan Annie decoder ring was to Ralphie. I decided that I didn’t care about being swindled. I had Tarzan, those animals, and Brothers of the Spear. Life was good. What I have written so far probably makes my mother sound like some sort of anti-intellectual grouch. She just doesn’t like to read. I think she may have trouble reading because of a vision problem that isn’t dyslexia but is almost as disabling. Strangely enough, during the years my sister and I were in grade school, it was Mom who took us to the city library once every two weeks in the summers. The public library was in a huge, old, white, two-story house next to the Massey-Ferguson dealership in town. Each summer the two librarians, one of whom I never willingly approached without my mom, oversaw a reading program for kids rather like the Pizza Hut reading program, but without the pizza. Why did our non-reading, book-a-phobic mother drive five miles each way to keep us reading? Because she was busy cooking and baking for field hands during the harvest season and the plowing that followed it, and with books in our hands, we would stay out of her way. See! Practical reading! That’s my theory, and it has never been disproved by any argument from my mother. I read my way through Raggedy Ann and Andy (recommended by my father’s older sister who had been an elementary teacher), the Mother West Wind books (full of talking animals), every horse book I could get my hands on, and a series about children in other countries that had words from their languages sprinkled throughout the text, and example of which might be, “Juan and Angela went to //la tienda//.” I was intrigued by the photos in the books and by the foreign words for which pronunciation guides were furnished. What I did not read is maybe just as revealing. As I grew older, I never read a Nancy Drew mystery, a Hardy Boys novel, or a Betty Cavanaugh romance. I read books about amphibians from which I learned about salamanders like the one we found in a hole beside our back steps, about cave exploration from which I learned the word //spelunker//, about Chief Joseph where I first read the speech he made at his surrender, about Wild Bill Hickock…. I was a weird kid and an even weirder girl. I learned that it was best not to be specific when people asked what I was reading. That way I avoided strange looks and thoughtless “humorous” comments. In the fifth grade my class read retellings of several Greek myths. I was hooked by the Persephone story and, while using the encyclopedia to learn more about Hades, discovered the concept of cross- referencing. If you read about Hades, at the end of the article there will be the names of other gods or goddesses who are in some way connected to what you have just read. Wow! Bonanza! I dug back and forth through the encyclopedia, especially during the part of the year when my desk was bumped right up against the bookcase where the volumes were stored. I read about gods all the way from Apollo and Artemis to Zeus, much of the time when I was supposed to be working on math assignments. Junior high is a sort of blur, but I remember reading one really badly written biography of Helen Keller. I think it was somewhere during these years that I accidentally got my hands on a novel that wasn’t really for people my age. My mother had taken us to the library again, this time to get books for book reports. Just to the left of the entrance and straight across from the circulation desk was a narrow section of shelves where new books were displayed. Ironically, my mother actually chose the book for me. She read the dust jacket and learned the book was about a woman from the Old Testament. One might assume, as my mother did, that this meant the book was appropriate for an adolescent. Not so. The author was Frank Slaughter, and I learned later, years later, that he specialized in rather raunchy books. I found a lot of new words in that book. I looked them all up in the dictionary. At dinner one evening the conversation turned to the book I was reading, and I decided it was safe to share a summary of a battle that occurred toward the middle of the book. When I finished, my father went into more detail about the event, which is when I realized he was reading or had already read the book too. I tried not to look guilty or embarrassed. He finished his comments and dinner went on. A no censorship rule went silently into effect. It wasn’t until 10th grade that I was formally introduced to the concept of great literature. Mrs. Kline, one of the two 10th grade English teachers and also the school librarian, gave us a list of recommended books. Most of the predictable classics were on it, and she read through the titles and gave us little blurbs about each. I remember reading //Green Mansions// from that list. Our class read and listened to //Julius Caesar//. I had heard of Shakespeare long before this, but I had never read any of his plays because we did not read //Romeo and// //Juliet// my freshman year. At the age of 12 I had tried to read //Hamlet// on my own from a Great Books volume of Shakespeare that my father’s younger brother owned. The print was small; the notes wore me out; so I gave up, hoping that some day someone would help me understand that play and others. Mrs. Kline was that someone. As we studied the play, I memorized over 100 lines of the dialogue, not because I was a brown noser, as some of the other kids in my class hinted, but because I loved the sound of the language. When I went in to deliver my lines, I got through 55 before Mrs. Kline asked how many I was prepared to recite. I told her, and she laughed and said that 55 were enough. But she laughed as though what I had done made her happy, not as though I was ridiculous. Bless you, Margery Kline. During my junior year I discovered where and what I was meant to be. I was meant to live in a library and spend my days reading books (one day I would realize that the problem with that goal was that I would need to find a way to get paid for sitting around reading). That year I also met the person who would inspire this dream. Miss Faye Duke taught American literature to juniors and English literature to seniors, so I spent two years with her. She was the TOUGHEST teacher in the school, maybe in the entire school system. I did not sleep the night before I started my junior year because I was afraid of Miss Duke. My cousin Diane had told me everything about her. She assigned lots of work, gave low grades, and had been known to freeze students with her stare. Within a month I loved Miss Duke. She thought students should read; she thought we should read most of the time. She never made fun of what I chose to read, and I chose the toughest books I thought I could handle from the list she gave us because I didn’t want to disappoint her. During that year I read Hawthorne, Twain, Cather, Steinbeck, short stories, plays, poetry, essays. Even when I didn’t really like some of the assignments, I read them because, if Miss Duke thought they was worth reading, there must be something of value in them. That approach worked until I chose and read //Portrait of a Lady// by Henry James. I thought I was going to die reading that book, and when I went in after school one day to sit with Miss Duke for my book report, this one a one-on-one with her during which she asked questions, in answer to her question, “What did you think of the book?” I told her that “I didn’t like the characters; because they were like cardboard cut-outs.” I said I felt “their lives were boring” and that I really //could// live the rest of my life without ever reading another James novel and still die a happy, old lady. Actually, I only said the part up to boring. I just thought the rest. Miss Duke sat silent for a few seconds and then said, “Well, maybe you aren’t mature enough for the book yet.” Busted! When I tell my students this story, they always get steamed up and shout that I should have told her where to go because who did she think she was telling me what to think. They don’t understand; I respected this teacher’s opinion. However, for the first time in my life, I did registered a mental reservation: “Well, maybe you’re right, but I don’t think so.” Senior year taking English 12, English literature, was like living in a literary paradise. I learned I loved Chaucer. I was allowed to read more Shakespeare. I read a witch’s part in //Macbeth// but wished I could be MacDuff because I wanted to say, “Turn, hellhound! Turn!’ Later I was Elizabeth Barrett Browning in //The Barretts of Wimpole Street//. I explored //Robert// Browning’s dramatic monologues. I dove into centuries of British poetry. I also found out what satire was and how deliciously or viciously funny it could be. At this point in my life, if someone had told me that I had to stop reading, I would have wanted to kill him or myself. Fast forward: By sophomore year in college, I was well on my way to earning a degree in English. The required reading list for the second survey course in American lit included //Portrait of a Lady//. Oh, joy! I decided to test Miss Duke’s earlier judgment of my response: I read the whole frigging thing again. This is what I learned: I DO NOT LIKE HENRY JAMES, and this is not because I am an immature reader. It is because, in my opinion, Henry James writes about boring people who need to get real lives, and his style is so pondorous that I will never read that book a third time. I became an independent reader, and Miss Duke had, inadvertently, helped me become one. I went on through the next two years reading and thinking. I read modern poetry for the first time and developed an addiction to Dylan Thomas. I reveled in the descriptions of Thomas Wolfe and grew impatient with Hemingway’s rain. If I had been asked to choose which poet I would continue to read Byron, Keats, or Shelley, I would have and eventually did choose Keats. My senior year I did an honors project on Theater of the Absurd, and the world has never looked the same to me since. I soon shifted into graduate school, which added more levels to my experience with books, but out of those years spent in school, my two years with Miss Duke were the most important. She taught me to be proud of being a reader, to be brave while reading, and to speak truthfully about what I thought of what I read. I still hadn’t learned that I did not have to finish a book just because I picked it up. I got the hang of that later. Today I live with books all around me—on the bookshelves, on the coffee and some lamp tables, on the dresser in the bedroom, on two chairs, on the floors of at least three rooms. I even have a library book cart full of books. If I move again, I will carefully box every one of them myself and carry as many of the boxes as I am able. To me my books are not a burden but a comfort. When I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered from the roof of the building that houses the Folger Library, and I want my books to be given away to people who will love them, people who will not let them die.

Life Is an Illustration of Literary Devices by Vernette Chance

I love irony-- the bait and switch, inside joke, inside-out situation or comment. Maybe I love irony because it is the gotchas in life that make me laugh, sometimes. I think I developed this appreciation for the inversion of expectation by watching how life pulls the rug out from under humans. These observations began very early; my sister and I were small children growing up on a farm in northwestern Oklahoma, I maybe seven and she five, when our father and grandfather decided to involve themselves in a swine experiment. They built three farrowing pens, bought three Hampshire sows, and set out to test whether they could make a profit raising registered hogs. The baby pigs (piglets) later made their appearance, one of them off-schedule and quite alone. He ended up living in a box in our kitchen and being handfed by Mom. The others eventually arrived, and when they were up and running about, Dad took my sister and me on a visit to the pens for a tour of inspection. We had been warned never to go into the pens alone because sows get vicious if they feel their offspring are threatened. Dad drove the sows and piglets into an outer pen, and we entered the first brooder house. Our eyes were drawn first to the barn swallow nest in the rafters where little swallows cheeped, but then we looked down, and there lay a little piglet stretched out, motionless. “Daddy, can we pet it?” “Now, just wait a minute,” he answered, nudging the piglet gently with his shoe. “No, you leave it alone. It’s dead.” There was a second nudge. Then he raised the piglet slightly by its front legs and dropped it. “Yup, dead as a door nail.” “How? When? Why?” we asked. “The mamma probably rolled over and crushed it or smothered it,” he said. We were horrified. It looked alive. It didn’t look crushed. Bad stuff happens, even to good pigs. “We should bury him under the tree with Butch,” said my sister. We buried all things dead—cats, dogs, parakeets, wild birds, rabbits, turtles, and eventually even tropical fish—under a Chinese elm tree near the windmill. Dad picked up the little pig by its hind legs and carried it swinging at knee level to the fence. My sister and I followed like professional mourners. He lifted the pig over the chest-high fence and dropped it to the ground, intending to leave the pen via the gate, retrieve the pig, and bury it under our dead animal tree. The little pig hit the ground, jumped up, squealed, and took off running in a northerly direction. I do not remember just where the piglet went or how my father caught it. All I remember is laughing, laughing until I hurt, and feeling that resurrection was a very real possibility. Today, if my sister and I spend more than 24 hours together, the story of the Lazarus pig always comes up and we laugh again. We laugh at the irony, that sudden surprise, that caught us off-guard and changed the entire mood of that day in the pig pen.

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